xcowsay displays a cute cow and message on your Linux desktop. Inspired by the original cowsay.
xcowsay includes all these amazing features:
- Fully configurable!
- Calculates display time from amount of text
- Dream mode — display images in the bubble
- Can draw thought and speech bubbles
- Daemon mode! Send your cow messages over DBus!
- Three different sized cows provided
- fortune(6) wrapper program: xcowfortune — cow will deliver pearls of wisdom!
- Replace the naffness that is xmessage(1)
- Should work with any window manager
- Supports UTF-8 characters properly
- Automatic word wrapping
- Use alternative non-cow images if you like
It works on Macs and *BSD too!
Latest version: xcowsay-1.5.1.tar.gz
You can also follow xcowsay development from my GitHub page.
xcowsay’s unexpected popularity means it’s now available directly from some Linux distributions and BSDs!
- Mandriva RPMs for i586 and x86_64.
- Fedora packages are here.
- FreeBSD port is here
- NetBSD users can install it via ports too – package here.
- OpenBSD port is here.
- Arch Linux users can get it from AUR.
- Gentoo users can get it from the main Portage tree.
- Debian and Ubuntu users should install xcowsay via apt.
Big thank you to everyone who’s packaged it for different platforms, made translations, or just commented!
Here’s a screen shot of the new dream mode:
Check out the xcowsay page on Freshmeat.
Posts
Nick,
am trying to ‘roll my own’ from source. THought I could. Is gtk+-2 the same as gtk2? I get an error
no package gtk+-2.0 found
no package gdk-pixbuf-2.0 found
but I have libgdk-pixbuf2 and gtk+2
http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/4340451/com/libgtk+2.0_0-2.10.3-5mdv2007.0.i586.rpm.html
Is there a way to .configure it so it will compile? (I might even try a binary if you have one heh, I have Mandriva 2007.0)
Thanks!
August 31, 2008 @ 4:22 am
Have you got the development versions of those packages? I think the package you need is libgtk+2.0_0-devel
http://rpmfind.net//linux/RPM/mandriva/2008.1/i586/media/main/release/libgtk+2.0_0-devel-2.12.9-2mdv2008.1.i586.html
(Although the one above is for 2008.1)
You should be able to install this via urpmi. Good luck!
August 31, 2008 @ 8:38 am
[…] xcowsay […]
September 1, 2008 @ 4:26 pm
Is it possible to use xcowsay to send messages to other users on the same machine.
We use NX server and have about 10 people on the machine (freenx)
I have noticed the dbus mode – this didn’t seem to do it.
Any ideas if it is possible ?
September 17, 2008 @ 5:07 pm
The problem with the DBus mode at the moment is that xcowsay connects to the user’s session bus, so you can send messages from other programs on the desktop, but you can’t send messages to different user’s session buses (this is a feature of DBus).
This was actually one of the things I wanted to do with the DBus mode originally. A neat solution might be to use the zero-conf XMPP (i.e. iChat) support in Telepathy (http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/). This would let you send cow-messages to any xcowsay user on the LAN, which would be pretty cool :-)
Since Telepathy is DBus-based it shouldn’t be too much work to extend the existing code to receive messages from this source too. I’ll let you know how I get on!
September 18, 2008 @ 11:20 am
can I have a feature request? I am not familiar with C so I can’t do that on my own.
It would be nice to have an option there, to make a moo sound when displaying cow. is that possible?
I am using xcowsay as email notification, and if I can also hear MOO sound it would be ubercool :)
November 2, 2008 @ 4:43 pm
[…] http://www.doof.me.uk/xcowsay/ (bkz: inek paketlemek) az sonra oyunalanında […]
August 20, 2009 @ 7:25 pm
Please, make it easy to make graphical themes for xcowsay…
I would love to have different pictures (like penguin, pig, some real person)
November 17, 2009 @ 3:31 am
Yes, I’m going to add a –image option to xcowsay 1.2 to make things like this easier. See here for a hacky way of doing it in 1.1:
http://www.doof.me.uk/2009/10/31/an-alternative-application-of-xcowsay/
November 17, 2009 @ 8:53 am
How can I change the cow to a duck?
November 18, 2009 @ 8:05 pm
> How can I change the cow to a duck?
I’m going to add a –image option to the next version of xcowsay to
allow you to do things like this.
It’s actually possible to do this in the current version using a hack –
see here:
http://www.doof.me.uk/2009/10/31/an-alternative-application-of-xcowsay/
November 19, 2009 @ 11:21 pm
Issuing:
xcowsay -v
with an .xcowsayrc file in home directory containing:
#
cow_size = small
gives message:
xcowsayrc: line 2: Expected token but found newline
xcowsay 1.1
Copyright (C) 2008 Nick Gasson
….
What token is expected ??
Thanks
November 20, 2009 @ 7:40 pm
Ooops! Looks like the config file doesn’t allow blank lines. Can’t believe that slipped through. I’ll fix it for the next release.
November 20, 2009 @ 8:11 pm
hello Nick!
i have just updated the pkgsrc package:
thank you for the 1.2 release and especially for the –image option.
keep up the good work Nick!
ciao,
Leonardo.
January 16, 2010 @ 8:39 pm
[…] xcowsay foi o notificador que me inspirou para fazer esta postagem. Sério. É muito legal. Veja o exemplo: $ at 17:00 warning: commands will be executed using /bin/sh at> echo "Lembrar de fazer o posto sobre o xcowsay!" | xcowsay -t 40000 at> job 15 at Sat Jan 22 17:00:00 2010 […]
January 22, 2010 @ 8:36 pm
Cute! :D
January 27, 2010 @ 1:35 am
I just want to say this program is great! Not only do I use it to pop up messages on my kids’ computers, but I use it for thin client kiosks at our public library (a picture of Melvil Dewey asks them to “Please Wait” every time the browser reloads).
Thank you for this software!
February 12, 2010 @ 5:51 pm
Hello.
There is a slight problem in xcowthink wrapper not quotting its arguments correctly, see bug report here:
https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=58452
The following patch fixes it:
diff -Naur -x ‘*~’ xcowsay-1.2/src/xcowthink xcowsay-1.2-fix-xcowthink-args-parsing/src/xcowthink
— xcowsay-1.2/src/xcowthink 2009-10-30 00:03:02.000000000 +0100
+++ xcowsay-1.2-fix-xcowthink-args-parsing/src/xcowthink 2010-03-28 21:29:56.000000000 +0200
@@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
#!/bin/sh
-exec xcowsay –think $*
+exec xcowsay –think “$@”
April 3, 2010 @ 8:57 pm
Thanks! I’ll include it in the next release.
April 3, 2010 @ 9:40 pm
we have been having a lot of fun terribly hacking at you great little app I want to say a big thanks for your work on this and I know we we will put it to good use and offer some feed back after we figure out more things that can be done with it we already have sound working using filte and of course playing with different images
thank you
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=57076
June 28, 2010 @ 2:28 pm
> we have been having a lot of fun terribly hacking at you…
That’s fantastic! :D
June 29, 2010 @ 7:57 am
I am the lobster from another dimension that found and suggested your program for Puppy (it has now morphed into xpupsay) I would recommend left and right sides for the image – so a Q&A type situation can be developed. Many thanks :)
June 29, 2010 @ 12:27 pm
Thanks for your suggestion. It would be fairly simple to add so I’ll try to include it in the next release.
June 29, 2010 @ 9:57 pm
Dear Nick,
I am enjoying cowsay immensely. Please have a look at http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=430859#430859 (my last example on page 3). Amazingly, via Pango, xcowsay supports span markup for text !!!), which means that all sorts of exciting things can be done with it. When scripted with some voice synthesis and sound, you can achieve a kind of quick-and dirty animation with almost no effort. Very nice.
Thanks for xcowsay.
With kind regards,
vovchik (Puppy Linux forum)
June 30, 2010 @ 11:16 am
Glad to hear abot speech marks. Vovchick wanted me to ask about anti aliasing for speech bubbles – may be hard coding.
Something a bit simpler is a teletype option – printing out one character with a millisecond break . . . if possible
July 1, 2010 @ 2:37 pm
blodgett just remembered cowshell! where it go?
July 2, 2010 @ 10:28 am
It went here! http://www.doof.me.uk/2010/07/02/cowshell/
July 2, 2010 @ 10:08 pm
> Vovchick wanted me to ask about anti aliasing for speech bubbles – may be hard coding.
Some other people have already asked about anti-aliasing. I meant to do it for 1.2 (using Cairo) but never got round to it. Adding teletype output probably wouldn’t be too hard. I’ll consider both of these for 1.3. Thanks for the suggestions!
July 2, 2010 @ 10:07 pm
______
——
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||—- w |
|| ||
August 9, 2010 @ 10:52 pm
______
——
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||—-w |
|| ||
August 9, 2010 @ 10:53 pm
damm!
August 9, 2010 @ 10:53 pm
A plague on variable-width fonts! Try this:
cowsay moo | xcowsay –font=monospace
August 9, 2010 @ 10:56 pm
___________________
——————-
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||—-w |
|| ||
August 10, 2010 @ 12:49 am
dam you nick!
August 10, 2010 @ 12:49 am
xterm -fa monospace
Warning: Cannot convert string “nil2” to type FontStruct
cowsay muuu
______
——
\ ^__^
\ (oo)\_______
(__)\ )\/\
||—-w |
|| ||
August 10, 2010 @ 1:08 am
http://sisyphus.ru/ru/srpm/Sisyphus/xcowsay
Many moos to you!
September 2, 2010 @ 8:11 pm
Check out my blog for instructions on how to get xcowsay 1.2 running on Ubuntu Lucid:
http://clockworkpcaustralia.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-get-xcowsay-1.html
September 14, 2010 @ 5:45 am
[…] http://www.doof.me.uk/xcowsay/ […]
September 27, 2010 @ 6:25 pm
I am trying to write a simple Perl program to talk to xcowsay. I got stuck.
Do yau have any more documentation about the dbus methods available so I can send it messages?
#!/usr/bin/perl
use Net::DBus;
my $bus = Net::DBus->session;
my $hal = $bus->get_service(“uk.me.doof.Cowsay”);
my $cowsay = $hal->get_object(“uk/me/doof/Cowsay”,
“uk.me.doof.Cowsay”);
And I get stuck.
October 15, 2010 @ 5:23 am
DOH!
Add this line to the end:
$object->ShowCow(“Hi there”);
That’s what I get for late night coding.
October 15, 2010 @ 4:43 pm
Cool, glad it works :-)
October 15, 2010 @ 5:21 pm
> Gentoo users can try this ebuild.
Actually xcowsay 1.2 is in main Gentoo Portage tree as games-misc/xcowsay: http://packages.gentoo.org/package/games-misc/xcowsay
Thaks for cute cow!
November 12, 2010 @ 9:46 am
I love xcowsay, but I can’t get it to display diacritics… é à ç and all display as a box with a cross inside… Any hint? Thanks!
November 16, 2010 @ 12:54 pm
> I love xcowsay, but I can’t get it to display diacritics
Do you think it could be the terminal you are using? I tried “xcowsay é à ç” in xterm and it displayed correctly. Another thing to try is putting the text in a file and piping that into xcowsay. Otherwise I’m not sure what the problem is :-(.
November 17, 2010 @ 7:59 am
Yes, it is a locale problem! I tried with an xterm too and it worked.
Thanks!
November 17, 2010 @ 9:37 am
[…] xcowsay 转载请注明出处：麦麦的不老阁 » 《xcowsay：让你的牛更形象可爱》本文地址：http://www.linuxhobby.com/archives/2650订阅博客地址：http://www.uncle.ws/subscribe/ […]
November 29, 2010 @ 3:16 am
[…] variant, as well as some classic BSD games like fortune. The audience also chimed in with gems like xcowsay. FOSS Games, by Mike Pfaiffer, Rob Keizer and Adam Thompson [47:33m]: Play Now | Play in […]
February 10, 2011 @ 8:10 pm
[…] version of Xcowsay (1.3) working on Ubuntu Posted on February 21, 2011 by clockworkpc Xcowsay is a great little program that brings the joy of a talking cow to your desktop.Sadly, the newest […]
February 21, 2011 @ 5:50 am
Excellent application. It’s not always easy finding a program that does exactly what you want. I’m currently using it for session logins. Thanks a lot,
November 9, 2011 @ 8:02 pm
Please, update to 1.3 for Ubuntu. Only works the “xcowfortune” command, dbus cannot enabled. Can you help me? I have Ubuntu 12.04.
April 29, 2012 @ 3:23 am
Unfortunately I don’t have any control over what version of xcowsay is
in Ubuntu. They use the same version as Debian which is 1.2. You could
try raising a bug with them? Does xcowsay print any error message?
May 1, 2012 @ 7:42 am
I have version 1.2.,so I tried install 1.3 with a script, although I suppose it was wrong . I reinstalled it from official packages and works now =). Thanks for the answers. Keep it up!
May 1, 2012 @ 11:57 am